Travel Guides

Auschwitz Memorial Museum

The Auschwitz concentration camp is actually made up of three
camps - Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III.
Together the complex forms the largest cemetery in the world,
preserved as a sombre memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, and
commemorating the hundreds of thousands of people exterminated
there by the Nazis during the Second World War. The
Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum was established in 1947 and visitors have
access to both camps and can wander freely around the structures,
ruins and gas chambers, and visit the exhibits displayed in the
surviving prison blocks at Auschwitz I.

The hushed atmosphere is one of shock from the moment visitors
enter the barbed-wire compound through the iron gate, ironically
inscribed with the words 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work Makes Free). The
buildings contain displays of photographs and horrific piles of
personal articles of the victims, including battered suitcases, and
thousands of spectacles, hair and shoes collected from the bodies.
The experience is vivid and disturbing, though also deeply
humanising. There are general exhibitions dedicated to the Jews and
their history, as well as an interesting documentary film screened
in the museum's cinema.

Birkenau sees far fewer tourists as it has fewer visitor
facilities and much of the camp was destroyed by the retreating
Nazis, but it is here that the sheer scale of the tragedy can be
experienced, with a viewing platform to give some perspective over
the vast fenced-in area stretching as far as the eye can see.
Birkenau was the principal camp where the extermination of millions
took place, a chillingly efficient set-up with rows of barracks and
four colossal gas chambers and ovens. Purpose-built railway tracks
lead through the huge gateway, terminating in the camp, with which
victims were transported from the ghettos to the camp in crowded
box-like carts, often being led straight into the gas chambers upon
arrival. A trip to the Auschwitz Memorial Museum is a must for any
visitor to Poland who wishes to experience some kind of sobering
communion with one of the greatest atrocities in the history of the
world.

Taking a guided tour of the camps is the best way to fully
comprehend what you are seeing and a tour takes at least three and
a half hours. Visitors should try and book a place on one of the
various guided tours at least two weeks before visiting - see the
official website below for details.